Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Channel Restructuring Along Crystal Springs: Creating Salmon Habitat On A Lowland Stream, Lua Olsen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Crystal Springs is a small tributary of Tenmile Creek located in the lower drainage basin of the Nooksack River (Figure 1). It is 2.6 km in length and has a total relief of approximately 21 meters. A soil survey of the area suggests that prior to agricultural development, Crystal Springs existed as a swamp and was later trained into the man-made irrigation ditch which it currently occupies. Aerial photographs taken as early as June 30, 1947 reveal that the channel has undergone no significant change in morphology in the last 50 years. Recently a local landowner granted permission for the …

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 1995/1996 Report, Robin A. Matthews, Michael Hilles, Geoffrey B. Matthews

Lake Whatcom Annual Reports

This report is part of an on-going series of annual reports and special project reports that document the Lake Whatcom monitoring program.

This work is conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies and other departments at Western Washington University. The major objective of this program is to provide long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and selected tributaries. Each section contains brief explanations about the water quality data, along with discussions of patterns observed in Lake Whatcom.

Short-Lived Intermediates In Aspartate Aminotransferase Systems, George Czerlinski, Richard Levin, Tjalling Ypma

Mathematics Faculty Publications

The kinetics of the reaction of aspartate aminotransferase with erythro-beta-hydroxy-aspartate, in which rapid mixing is followed (upon reaching a suitable stationary state) by a very fast temperature jump, is numerically simulated. Values for rate constants are used to the extent known, otherwise estimated. It is shown that reaction steps not resolvable by rapid mixing can be resolved by subsequent chemical relaxation. Since several absorption spectra of enzyme complexes overlap, use of a pH-indicator is investigated. When the pH-indicator is coupled to the protonic dissociation of free enzyme, the fast steps are easily detected in the chemical relaxation portion of the …

Integrable Smooth Planar Billiards And Evolutes, Edoh Y. Amiran

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Any elliptic region is an example of an integrable domain: the set of tangents to a confocal ellipse or hyperbola remains invariant under reflection across the normal to the boundary. The main result states that when Ω is a strictly convex bounded planar domain with a smooth boundary and is integrable near the boundary, its boundary is necessarily an ellipse. The proof is based on the fact that ellipses satisfy a certain “transitivity property”, and that this characterizes ellipses among smooth strictly convex closed planar curves. To establish the transitivity property, KAM theory is used with a perturbation of the …

The Planet, 1997, Winter, Julie Irvin, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Hessian (Leonardian, Middle Lower Permian) Depositional Sequences And Their Fusulinid Zones, West Texas, Charles A. Ross, June R. P. Ross

Geology Faculty Publications

The lower Leonardian (Lower Permian) Hess Limestone in the eastern part of the Glass Mountains, West Texas, forms a high, well-exposed escarpment of repetitious, shallow-water, platform limestone facies for about 35 km. The strike of the outcrops cuts the strike of depositional facies at relatively low angle so that the actual width of the carbonate platform, from its marginal rim to shore facies, was probably less than 10 km (Figs. 1, 2). At the platform margin, the Hess Limestone passes abruptly into coarse, conglomeratic slope deposits that form the Skinner Ranch Formation. The pebbles, cobbles, boulders, (some the size of …

An Analysis Of Pre-Settlement Biomass And Vegetation In Northwest Whatcom County, Washington, Circa Late 19th Century., Jayme Anne Gordon

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Much of ecology, especially terrestrial ecology, studies how a given system changes over time. Pressures from preservationists and demands for timber products have focused ecological attention on Pacific Northwest forest ecosystems, and much of the debate has been over how change affects "old-growth” forests. Old-growth forests have a number of distinguishing characteristics including species composition, size of trees and forest structure that make them unique (Waring and Franklin 1979, Franklin et al. 1981). Old-growth forests west of the Cascade mountain range are dominated by Douglas fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) trees approximately 200-750 …

Magnetic Anisotropy Of Barbados Prism Sediments, Bernard A. Housen

Geology Faculty Publications

Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) results from sediments spanning the basal décollement of the Barbados accretionary prism show a striking progression across this structure that strongly supports the hypothesis that it is strongly overpressured. In the accretionary prism above the décollement, the minimum AMS axes are subhorizontal and nearly east–west trending, whereas the maximum AMS axes are nearly north–south trending, and shallowly inclined. At the top of the décollement, the AMS minimum axes orientations abruptly change to nearly vertical; this orientation is maintained throughout the décollement and in the underthrust sediments below. The AMS orientations in the prism sediments above …

Nealian And Lenoxian (Wolfcampian, Lower Permian) Depositional Sequences, Fusulinid Facies And Biostratigraphy, Glass Mountains, Texas, Charles A. Ross, June R. P. Ross

Geology Faculty Publications

The Wolfcampian Series crops out along the base of the Glass Mountains escarpment (King, 1930, 1937) and, in the western part of the Marathon Basin, in folded and faulted beds exposed in the Dugout structural fold belt, the westernmost belt in the Marathon Orogen (Ross, 1963). The Wolfcampian is divided into two stages, a lower Nealian Stage and an upper Lenoxian Stage (Ross and Ross, 1987a, 1987b). Strata of these two stages are separated by a major tectonic event in the history of the Marathon orogeny and, as a result, by a major angular unconformity that separates the structurally deformed …

Structural Geology Of The Décollement At The Toe Of The Barbados Accretionary Prism, Alex Maltman, Pierre Labaume, Bernard A. Housen

Geology Faculty Publications

The base of the Barbados accretionary prism is defined by a décollement, which separates material accreting to the Caribbean Plate from underthrusting Atlantic Ocean sediment. A three-dimensional seismic survey has shown the structure to contain intervals of negative polarity, interpreted as representing pockets of overpressured fluid. Consequently, Ocean Drilling Program Leg 156 was designed specifically to investigate the hydrogeological and deformational behavior of the décollement.

Analysis of recovered cores shows the structure to comprise a zone of intensified but heterogeneous deformation, 31 m thick, but 39 m thick if suprajacent breccia and various physico-chemical anomalies are included. The top of …

Structure, Metamorphism, And Geochronology Along The Southern Margin Of The Breakenridge Orthogneiss, Coast Range, Southern British Columbia, John A. (John Andrew) Feltman

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Breakenridge orthogneiss is located at the southern end of the Coast Plutonic Complex, in the southwest Canadian Cordillera. It consists of sheeted orthogneiss sills and metamorphosed country rock folded into a tight, upright antiform. The deformational and metamorphic history along the southern margin of this structure is the focus of this study.

The orthogneiss is in original intrusive contact with enveloping metavolcanic rocks of the Jura-Cretaceous Slollicum Schist. A new U-Pb zircon age of 103.8 ± 0.5 Ma, together with a published age of 96 Ma (Parrish and Monger, 1992), establishes an episode of igneous intrusion and crystallization between …

A Comparison Of The November 1990 And November 1995 Floods Along The Main Stem Nooksack River, Whatcom County, Washington, Ryan T. (Ryan Travis) Houser

WWU Graduate School Collection

During November 1990 two floods on the Nooksack River breached flood control structures near the city of Everson, sending floodwater into the Sumas Overflow. The Sumas Overflow is a low area lying north of the Nooksack River stretching from Everson to the Vedder River in British Columbia, Canada. The 1990 floods resulted in more than $7 million in damage to the Sumas Overflow. The economic impacts of this loss prompted the construction of a levee extension to protect the Everson area from inundation.

Many residents of the Nooksack River floodplain, including Everson Mayor Matt Lagerway, claimed that the levee extension …

The Planet, 1996, Fall, Julie Irvin, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

A Summer Internship With U.S. Senator Patty Murray - Regional Office, Everett, Washington, Lisa J. (Lisa Jo) Braly

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

During the summer of 1996,1 participated in the US Senate internship program in the Everett Regional office of Senator Patty Murray. This was a fairly new office, having begun only five months before I started in July, as well as a small office. (It had one part- time person, my supervisor, which became two upon my arrival.) There was no precedent for what my job entailed so it was designed as the summer progressed. My supervisor was Jill McKinney, a very friendly and helpful woman who had been in the “political industry of staffing for various Congress-people over the years. …

Naticid Gastropod Prey Selectivity Through Time And The Hypothesis Of Escalation, Patricia H. Kelley, Thor A. Hansen

Geology Faculty Publications

The hypothesis of escalation posits that biologic hazards such as predation have increased during the Phanerozoic. Previously, a survey of drilling frequencies in the Cretaceous and Paleogene of the North American Coastal Plain suggested an episodic pattern of escalation within the naticid gastropod predator-prey system. This study examines escalation from the perspective of naticid prey selectivity. If escalation occurred within the system, less selectivity of prey may be apparent in the Paleogene compared to younger assemblages. We test this hypothesis for four Eocene Coastal Plain assemblages. Contrary to predictions, intraspecific prey size selectivity was well developed for nine of eleven …

Timing Of Latest Eocene Molluscan Extinction Patterns In Mississippi, David M. Hassl, Thor A. Hansen

Geology Faculty Publications

Molluscs removed from 12 bulk samples of the Yazoo Formation (upper Eocene), exposed in a quarry at Cynthia, Mississippi, are similar in com- position and diversity to those found in the underlying upper Eocene Moodys Branch Formation, when dif- ferences in outcrop area are considered (74% of the Yazoo species are also found in the Moodys Branch). This suggests there was no significant extinction during the late Eocene (at the P15/P16 biozone boundary) as has been reported for planktic foraminifera. Only 11.4% of the species from the Yazoo extend into the Oligocene Red Bluff Formation, suggesting a large molluscan extinction …

Low Temperature Magnetic Properties Of Siderite And Magnetite In Marine Sediments, Bernard A. Housen, S. K. Banerjee, B. M. Moskowitz

Geology Faculty Publications

Low temperature magnetic techniques provide useful tools to detect the presence of magnetite and pyrrhotite in sediments through identification of their low temperature transitions, to determine the amount of ultrafine-grained (superparamagnetic) material in sediments, and can potentially detect the presence of certain types of magnetotactic bacteria. Application of these types of experiments to nannofossil chalks from beneath the Barbados accretionary prism led to some unusual results, which are attributed to the presence of siderite. Thermal demagnetization of low-temperature remanence after cooling in zero field and in a 2.5 T field both displayed large remanence losses from 20 K to 40 …

Late Cenozoic Structure And Tectonics Of The Northern Mojave Desert, Elizabeth R. Schermer, B. P. Luyendyk, S. Cisowski

Geology Faculty Publications

In the Fort Irwin region of the northern Mojave desert, late Cenozoic east striking sinistral faults predominate over northwest striking dextral faults of the same age. Kinematic indicators and offset marker units indicate dominantly sinistral strike slip on the east striking portions of the faults and sinistral-thrust slip on northwest striking, moderately dipping segments at the east ends of the blocks. Crustal blocks ∼7–10 km wide by ∼50 km long are bounded by complex fault zones up to 2 km wide at the edges and ends of each block. Faulting initiated after ∼11 Ma, and Quaternary deposits are faulted and …

The Planet, 1996, Spring, Deanna Woolston, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

An Electroabsorption Study Of Porous Silicon, Melanie Fewings

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Bulk silicon is an indirect band gap material. When carriers are injected into bulk silicon, electron-hole recombination takes place thermally via phonon exchange, and not by emission of photons. Porous silicon, on the other hand, is a fairly efficient emitter of light in the visible region. Much research is currently under way to find out what makes porous silicon able to emit light. One main theory suggests that the energy bands of bulk silicon may be "squeezed" by being quantum confined, and porous silicon is just an array of quantum silicon wires. Another possibility is that defects in the huge …

Huxley Hotline, 1996, March 13, Traci Edge, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

Historical Collection of Huxley Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 1994/1995 Report, Robin A. Matthews, Michael Hilles, Geoffrey B. Matthews

Lake Whatcom Annual Reports

This report is part of an on-going series of annual reports and special project reports that document the Lake Whatcom monitoring program.

This work is conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies and other departments at Western Washington University. The major objective of this program is to provide long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and selected tributaries. Each section contains brief explanations about the water quality data, along with discussions of patterns observed in Lake Whatcom.

Huxley Hotline, 1996, January 31, Traci Edge, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

Historical Collection of Huxley Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The Planet, 1996, Winter, Deanna Woolston, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Space, Time, And Matter, Henry G. Schwarz

History Faculty and Staff Publications

One of the principal tasks of current cosmology is to determine the amount of matter in the present universe. This task, however, is hampered by two basic errors, one the present method of measuring distances, particularly the reliance on the notion of a "standard candle," and the other the way the amount of matter is estimated, namely, by counting objects in the visi­ble universe and estimating the amount of invisible matter. Underlying these two errors is the failure to study the universe in terms of space-time.

The Origin Of The Rock Lake Stratabound Copper-Silver Deposit, Rock Lake, Montana, Christopher B. (Christopher Borgen) Hemstad

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Rock Lake copper-silver deposit is a zoned, stratiform, red-bed type deposit, occurring within the Revett Formation of the Proterozoic Belt Supergroup. Structurally the deposit occurs in the west limb of an overturned syncline and is bounded to the west by the Rock Lake normal fault and to the east by the Libby Lakes thrust. At Rock Lake the copper-silver minerals are found in a zonally distributed copper-sulfide system consisting of seven gradational zones representing a migrating redox interface. The sulfide system is wedge shaped with a thick pyrite-galena core near the Rock Lake fault. Vertically and horizontally, from the …

Structure And Metamorphism Of The Kwoiek Creek Area, British Columbia, Kristine M. (Kristine Marie) Alvarez

WWU Graduate School Collection

A complex record of orogenesis is preserved in part of a large country rock septum within the southeast Coast Plutonic Complex (CPC) near the Kwoiek Creek area of British Columbia. The study area includes part of the large 90-84 Ma Scuzzy Pluton. Country rock is the Settler Schist near the pluton, and the slightly metamorphosed Permo-Jurassic Bridge River assemblage, a subduction-accretionary complex, and the hemipelagic Cayoosh assemblage. Earliest deformation produced isoclinal folds and an axial planar foliation. Subsequent folds are southwest vergent, and produced a spaced cleavage. High angle reverse faulting along the Bralorne-Kwoiek Creek Fault followed. The area then …

Local Magnetic Properties Of Antiferromagnetic Febr2, J. Peloth, R. A. Brand, Takele Seda, M. M. Pereira De Azevedo, W. Kleeman, Ch. Binek, J. Kushauer, D. Bertrand

Physics & Astronomy

The antiferromagnet FeBr₂ has been studied by Mössbauer spectroscopy in external fields both in the metamagnetic region below the multicritical temperature T_MCP and in the second-order transition region above. The local magnetization shows that the metamagnetic transition occurs by spin flips, as in simple models. However, in the second-order transition region, the local magnetization of the sublattice oriented antiparallel to the external field varies continuously but remains parallel to the c axis. This can only be understood if the external magnetic field induces strong transversal spin precession of the moments on the antiparallel sublattice. This shows that the …

Huxley Hotline, 1995, October 17, Traci Edge, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

Historical Collection of Huxley Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The Planet, 1995, Fall, Deanna Woolston, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.