Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Relationship Between Carbon Emissions, Land Use Change And The Oil Palm Industry Within Southeast Asia, Savanna L. Booth

Master's Projects and Capstones

Tropical forests store the largest amount of carbon globally by sequestering up to 2.7 Gt of carbon every year in soils and vegetation. Deforestation and the conversion of tropical peatland soil have contributed to global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, as well as significantly hindering tropical ecosystems and the natural carbon sequestration potential that could potentially help mitigate atmospheric CO₂ levels. Deforestation has increased rapidly since the 1970’s across Southeast Asia with oil palm contributing to 61% of deforestation between 2010 and 2015 with emissions reaching 22.1 million tons CO₂-eq during that time. The conversions of tropical peatlands …

Proposed Legislation Seeks To Stimulate Investment In Coastal Resiliency, Jon Cawley

News Items

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Heatwave On A Megacity: An Observational Analysis Of New York City During July 2016, Prathap Ramamurthy, Jorge Gonzalez, Luis E. Ortiz, Mark Arend, Fred Moshary

Publications and Research

More than half of the world's current population resides in urban areas, and cities account for roughly three-quarters of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Current and future trends in urbanization will have significant impacts on global climate. However, our collective understanding of the climate of urban areas remains deficient, which is mainly related to significant knowledge gaps in observations. The New York City Summer Heat Campaign was initiated to address some of these critical knowledge gaps. As part of the campaign the urban boundary layer over New York City was continuously monitored during July 2016, a period that witnessed three …

Increasing Public Skepticism In The Face Of Imminent Dangers From Climate Change: A Call For Science To Repair Rifts Between Society And Academia, Matthew W. Morrissey, Joshua Schmidt

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project is a composition of a literature review, our learning process, and an attached experimental project. The project as a whole sought to understood how and why policies/corporations resist environmentally sustainable practices/laws and makes suggestions for how to convince people to change their behaviors and utilize their power as consumers. Overall, our goal was to investigate and understand the relationship between science and the public by composing a literature review of environmental science, sociology, and psychology papers, and then compose a presentation that would communicate the threat of climate change. The interdisciplinary nature of climate change made this research …

Possible Evaporite Karst In An Interior Layered Deposit In Juventae Chasma, Mars, Davide Baioni, Mario Tramontana

International Journal of Speleology

This paper describes karst landforms observed in an interior layered deposit (ILD) located within Juventae Chasma a trough of the Valles Marineris, a rift system that belongs to the Tharsis region of Mars. The ILD investigated is characterized by spectral signatures of kieserite, an evaporitic mineral present on Earth. A morphologic and morphometric survey of the ILD surface performed on data of the Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) highlighted the presence of depressions of various shapes and sizes. These landforms interpreted as dolines resemble similar karst landforms on Earth and in other regions of Mars. The observed karst …

Summer Precipitation Occurrence Effect On Two Passerine Species In Thule, Greenland, Sara E. Baugh

Celebration of Learning

Climate change is occurring at a faster rate in the Arctic than the rest of the globe, causing temperature rises at twice the rate of the global average and increased summer precipitation in the form of rain. These precipitation events are predicted to affect migratory bird species that breed throughout the Arctic. Increased occurrence of heavy rainstorms indirectly affect bird populations by impacting distribution and abundance of food supply, and directly by increasing mortality rates of juveniles. Studies conducted on bird species throughout the low Arctic regions; have shown that it is not the total precipitation of a breeding season …

Investigation Of The 2013 Alberta Flood From Weather And Climate Perspectives, Bernardo Teufel, G. T. Diro, K. Whan, S. M. Milrad, Et Al.

Publications

During 19–21 June 2013 a heavy precipitation event affected southern Alberta and adjoining regions, leading to severe flood damage in numerous communities and resulting in the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. This flood was caused by a combination of meteorological and hydrological factors, which are investigated from weather and climate perspectives with the fifth generation Canadian Regional Climate Model. Results show that the contribution of orographic ascent to precipitation was important, exceeding 30% over the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Another contributing factor was evapotranspiration from the land surface, which is found to have acted as an important moisture …

Water-Energy Sector Collaboration In The United States: Benefits, Barriers, And Climate-Change Implications, Cassandra J. Osterhoudt

Sustainability and Social Justice

The purpose of this report is to examine the impact of the water-energy nexus in the United States, and identify opportunities for increased collaboration between water and energy utilities. Through reviewing the regulatory history of both sectors, I explore how regulations on utilities align with the Porter Hypothesis, and the impacts the water-energy nexus will have moving forward, including under climate-change scenarios. The extent of collaboration between sectors has been relatively limited to states with progressive energy and water efficiency policies. This report identifies existing barriers and benefits to collaboration, and utilizes two case studies; California and Massachusetts. Results are …

Financial Assessment Of Agricultural Lands At Risk To Coastal Salt Marsh Migration In Relation To Climate Change Induced Sea Level Rise In Dorchester County, Maryland, Jewell Porter

Sustainability and Social Justice

The increasing rate and effects of sea level rise is a major environmental concern in the Chesapeake Bay. This paper evaluates the impacts of rising sea level on coastal salt marshes and the surrounding agricultural lands at risk in Dorchester County, Maryland to build off existing environmental monitoring work performed by NOAA’s Sentinel Site Program. The results of the spatial analysis were used to estimate monetary benefits to incentivize farmers to protect these marshes by making their land available for marsh migration to occur. Looking at three scenarios of sea level rise and marsh migration, grain crops (corn, soybeans, and …

The Role Of Trade And Renewables In The Nexus Of Economic Growth And Environmental Degradation: Revisiting The Environmental Kuznets Curve (Ekc), Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan

Undergraduate Research Awards

Based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, this study investigates whether there is a revised EKC relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions under the presence of renewable energy and trade for a panel of 35 countries whose trade openness index have remained higher than average global trade index over the period 1980-2012. By addressing similar trade characteristics rather than income levels, this paper applies a panel analysis with random effects and fixed effects to test EKC hypothesis. We use the principal component analysis to explain why CO2 emissions stands as a critical indicator of environmental quality. The results …

Growth Of Orbicella Faveolata In La Parguera, Puerto Rico, Darren B. Marshall

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Reef-building corals are subject to high amounts of stress, including pollution and rising sea surface temperatures due to climate change. These factors can affect the ability of corals to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons. Evaluation of the effects of climate change may be facilitated by evaluation of records of coral skeletal growth over a long period of time. The aim of this study was to evaluate skeletal growth of the coral Orbicella faveolata in La Parguera, Puerto Rico over a 32-year period. For this, 14 Orbicella faveolata core samples were collected from corals at two reefs (1.2 km apart) in …

Precipitation Drivers Of Cropping Frequency In The Brazilian Cerrado: Evidence And Implications For Decision-Making, Keith R. Spangler, Amanda H. Lynch, Stephanie A. Spera

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

The Amazon basin has been subjected to unprecedented rates of land-use change over the past several decades, primarily as a result of the expansion of agriculture. Enhanced rain forest conservation efforts toward the end of the twentieth century slowed deforestation of the Amazon but, in turn, increased demand for land repurposing in the adjacent Cerrado (savanna) region, where conservation regulations are less strict. To maintain or increase yields while minimizing the need for additional land, agricultural producers adopted a form of intensification in which two rain-fed crops are planted within a single growing season (double cropping). Using 10 years (August …

China: Avoiding Impediments To Successful Climate Change Mitigation, Molly Rose Van Engelenhoven

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper uses the Cultural Topography (CTOPs) methodology, an intelligence community standard which is used to avoid ethnocentric analysis and the dangerous practice of mirror imaging--projecting US culture on to another country rather than viewing the costs and benefits they face through their own cultural lens. CTOPs assess a country’s culture by examining four components of culture: identity, values, norms, and perceptual lens of an actor in conjunction with a specific issue of concern. This paper examines the internal culture of China, with the Chinese government as the key actor, to discover how to build effective policy to regulate air …

Climate Change, Managed Relocation, And The Risk Of Intra-Continental Plant Invasions: A Theoretical And Empirical Exploration Relative To The Flora Of New England, Jesse Bellemare, Bryan Connolly, Dov F. Sax

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The high rate of anthropogenic climate change projected for coming decades and evidence of low migration ability for many species have led researchers to warn of a looming extinction crisis. This threat is expected to be most acute for small-ranged endemic species, which could see novel climatic conditions develop rapidly across the entirety of their limited geographic ranges. To avoid extinctions, some conservationists have proposed that climateimperiled species might be candidates for "assisted colonization" or "managed relocation" to new regions, outside their historical ranges. One major concern related to managed relocation is the possibility that some relocated species could later …

Sea Change In Management Strategies: The Implications Of Global Climate Change On Policy Conceptions Of And Responses To Invasive Marine Species, Griffin J. Hunt

Senior Theses and Projects

The dispersal of the invasive red lionfish (Pterois volitans) across the Caribbean–Atlantic reverberates throughout the region’s public policy, conservation efforts, and economic concerns. Invasions by non–native species generally exhibit a wide range of negative effects on recipient ecosystems, and the lionfish case is no exception. Of central concern, this invasion has occurred at a rate, scale, and magnitude that precludes traditional management efforts. This paper assesses the diverse anthropogenic factors that contributed to the establishment of lionfish within the Caribbean–Atlantic, as well as the reasons for the species’ subsequent rapid dispersal throughout the region. This work investigates how …

A Sensitivity Study Of The Impact Of Dynamic Vegetation On Simulated Future Climate Change Over Southern Europe And The Mediterranean, Clement Alo, Emmanouil N. Anagnostou

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Recent projections of climate change from general circulation and regional climate models over southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin show strong warming and pronounced decrease in precipitation over large portion of the region, especially in the summer. While the role of vegetation in modulating the region's climate is widely recognized, most, if not all, of these climate change projections do not account for the response of the dynamic biosphere to the potential climate changes. In this study we investigate the role of climate–vegetation interactions in a regional climate model (RegCM3) linked to a dynamic vegetation model (CLM-DGVM). High spatial resolution …

Influence Of Internal Variability On Population Exposure To Hydroclimatic Changes, Justin S. Mankin, Daniel Viviroli, Mesfin Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Radley M. Horton, Jason E. Smerdon, Noah S. Diffenbaugh

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Future freshwater supply, human water demand, and people’s exposure to water stress are subject to multiple sources of uncertainty, including unknown future pathways of fossil fuel and water consumption, and ‘irreducible’ uncertainty arising from internal climate system variability. Such internal variability can conceal forced hydroclimatic changes on multi-decadal timescales and near-continental spatial-scales. Using three projections of population growth, a large ensemble from a single Earth system model, and assuming stationary per capita water consumption, we quantify the likelihoods of future population exposure to increased hydroclimatic deficits, which we define as the average duration and magnitude by which evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation …

How Lessons From A Past Disaster Can Influence Resilience And Climate Adaptation In Broward County, Florida, Hannah Rose Torres

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the face of future uncertainties, many places are struggling with decisions about how to prepare for and adapt to climate change. The purpose of this research is to shed light on the concept of resilience, and uncover lessons for resilience-building exposed by a past disaster, Hurricane Wilma.

The dissertation begins with an introduction (Chapter 1) detailing the research problem, key terms and overall research design. The study was conducted in three distinct phases. The first phase (Chapter 2), explored the concept of resilience to understand how it was defined in three South Florida communities. Content analyses of city and …

Carbon Sequestration By Australian Tidal Marshes, Peter I. Macreadie, Q. R. Oliver, J. J. Kelleway, Oscar Serrano, P. E. Carnell, C. J. Ewers Lewis, T. B. Atwood, J. Sanderman, J. Baldock, R. M. Connolly, C. M. Duarte, Paul Lavery, A. Steven, C. E, Lovelock

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Australia’s tidal marshes have suffered significant losses but their recently recognised importance in CO2 sequestration is creating opportunities for their protection and restoration. We compiled all available data on soil organic carbon (OC) storage in Australia’s tidal marshes (323 cores). OC stocks in the surface 1 m averaged 165.41 (SE 6.96) Mg OC ha − 1 (range 14 – 963 Mg OC ha − 1). The mean OC accumulation rate was 0.55 ± 0.02 Mg OC ha − 1 yr − 1. Geomorphology was the most important predictor of OC stocks, with fluvial sites having twice the stock of OC …

Quantifying The Short-Term Dynamics Of Soil Organic Carbon Decomposition Using A Power Function Model, Weiping Zhou, Jinhong He, Dafeng Hui, Weijun Shen

Biology Faculty Research

Introduction

Soil heterotrophic respiration (R _h, an indicator of soil organic carbon decomposition) is an important carbon efflux of terrestrial ecosystems. However, the dynamics of soil R _h and its empirical relations with climatic factors have not been well understood.

Methods

We incubated soils of three subtropical forests at five temperatures (10, 17, 24, 31, and 38 °C) and five moistures (20, 40, 60, 80, and 100% water holding capacity (WHC)) over 90 days. R _h was measured throughout the course of the incubation. Three types of models (log-linear, exponential, and power model) were fitted to the measurements …

Rethinking Our Global Coastal Investment Portfolio, Erin Mccreless, Michael W. Beck

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Coastal gray infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and buildings, is critical for communities, and we invest significantly in it. We also invest in the restoration and maintenance of coastal green infrastructure such as wetlands and reefs, which provide many services and benefits to human communities. However, the relative scale of financial investments in different coastal sectors – that is, our global coastal investment portfolio – remains poorly understood. We identify some of the major sources of funding for coastal green and gray infrastructure globally, including international aid funds; US public and private funds for coastal conservation, restoration and management; and private …

What Causes People To Change Their Opinion About Climate Change?, Risa Palm, Gregory B. Lewis, Bo Feng

Geosciences Faculty Publications

After a decade of steady growth in the acceptance of the existence of climate change and its anthropogenic causes, opinions have polarized, with almost one-third of Americans, mostly Republicans, denying that the climate is changing or that human activity is responsible. What causes Americans to change their minds on this issue? Using a large panel data set, we examined the impacts of direct experience with weather anomalies, ideology, relative prioritization of environmental conservation in comparison to economic development, and motivated reasoning that adjusts individual opinion to align with others who share one’s party identification. A generalized ordered logit model confirmed …

Transitions In Climate And Energy Discourse Between Hurricanes Katrina And Sandy, Emily M. Cody, Jennie C. Stephens, James P. Bagrow, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse. Media coverage of extreme weather events simultaneously shapes and reflects public discourse on climate issues. Here, we analyze climate and energy newspaper coverage of Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012) using topic models, mathematical techniques used to discover abstract topics within a set of documents. Our results demonstrate that post-Katrina …

Mass Coral Mortality Under Local Amplification Of 2 °C Ocean Warming, Thomas M. Decarlo, Anne L. Cohen, George T. F. Wong, Kristen A. Davis, Pat Lohman, Keryea Soong

OES Faculty Publications

A 2 °C increase in global temperature above pre-industrial levels is considered a reasonable target for avoiding the most devastating impacts of anthropogenic climate change. In June 2015, sea surface temperature (SST) of the South China Sea (SCS) increased by 2 °C in response to the developing Pacific El Nino. On its own, this moderate, short-lived warming was unlikely to cause widespread damage to coral reefs in the region, and the coral reef "Bleaching Alert" alarm was not raised. However, on Dongsha Atoll, in the northern SCS, unusually weak winds created low-flow conditions that amplified the 2 °C basin-scale …

Evidence For A Climate-Driven Hydrologic Regime Shift In The Canadian Columbia Basin, Janice Brahney, Frank Weber, Vanessa Foord, John Janmaat, Paul Jefferson Curtis

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Water resources from the Columbia River Basin are intensely used for domestic, agricultural, industrial and hydroelectric generation needs. Water availability in the Pacific Northwest is influenced by several ocean–atmosphere modes of climate variability that occur in the Pacific Ocean. Climate change has the potential to alter these relationships and influence both the volume and timing of streamflow in the snowmelt-dominated tributaries to the Columbia River. Here, the historical influences of climate variability and recent climate warming on the volume and timing of streamflow for 40 tributary streams in the Columbia River Basin of Canada were evaluated. Regional relationships were found …

Environmentally Friendly Industries: An Examination Of Ecotourism As The Solution To The Environmental Degradation Caused By The International Tourism Industry, Whitney Michael

Honors Theses – Charlotte Campus

The increasing visibility of ecological alterations due to global climate change have required high-impact industries to reexamine their environmental impact. Transnational organizations such as the United Nations have identified the current management practices of the international tourism industry as a significant contributing factor to global warming. The high volume implications of the large-scale establishments necessary to lodging facilities in the tourism trade are responsible for damages such as resource depletion and pollution. Existing levels of environmental impact show irreparable and imminent damage to the world environment if current methods of the industry are allowed to continue.

New trends in consumer …

Contemporary And Future Characteristics Of Precipitation Indices In The Kentucky River Basin, Somsubhra Chattopadhyay, Dwayne R. Edwards, Yao Yu

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Climatic variability can lead to large-scale alterations in the hydrologic cycle, some of which can be characterized in terms of indices involving precipitation depth, duration and frequency. This study evaluated the spatiotemporal behavior of precipitation indices over the Kentucky River watershed for both the baseline period of 1986–2015 and late-century time frame of 2070–2099. Historical precipitation data were collected from 16 weather stations in the watershed, while future rainfall time-series were obtained from an ensemble of 10 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global circulation models under two future emission pathways: Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5. Annual …

Climate Warming Can Accelerate Carbon Fluxes Without Changing Soil Carbon Stocks, Susan E. Ziegler, Ronald Benner, Sharon A. Billings, Kate A. Edwards, Michael Philben, Xinbiao Zhu, Jerome Laganière

Faculty Publications

Climate warming enhances multiple ecosystem C fluxes, but the net impact of changing C fluxes on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks over decadal to centennial time scales remains unclear. We investigated the effects of climate on C fluxes and soil C stocks using space-for-time substitution along a boreal forest climate gradient encompassing spatially replicated sites at each of three latitudes. All regions had similar SOC concentrations and stocks (5.6 to 6.7 kg C m−2). The three lowest latitude forests exhibited the highest productivity across the transect, with tree biomass:age ratios and litterfall rates 300 and 125% higher than those in …

Ozone Depletion, A Big Threat To Climate Change: What Can Be Done?, Sumera Aziz Ali, Savera Aziz Ali, Nadir Suhail

Community Health Sciences

Ozone in the stratosphere is very important as it acts as a safeguard for the earth and protects life from harmful ultraviolet radiations coming from the sun. Depletion of stratospheric ozone, resulting from atmospheric pollution has led to increased ultraviolet radiation at the earth’s surface as well as spectral shifts to the more biologically damaging shorter wavelengths. A decrease in the concentration of stratospheric ozone enhances the solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which is harmful to the growth of the plant and various other metabolic processes of the organisms and might cause changes in pigment concentrations, nucleic acids, and proteins. Multiple …

The Costs Of Photorespiration To Food Production Now And In The Future, Berkley J. Walker, Andy Vanloocke, Carl J. Bernacchi, Donald R. Ort

Andy VanLoocke

Photorespiration is essential for C3 plants but operates at the massive expense of fixed carbon dioxide and energy. Photorespiration is initiated when the initial enzyme of photosynthesis, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/ oxygenase (Rubisco), reacts with oxygen instead of carbon dioxide and produces a toxic compound that is then recycled by photorespiration. Photorespiration can be modeled at the canopy and regional scales to determine its cost under current and future atmospheres. A regional-scale model reveals that photorespiration currently decreases US soybean and wheat yields by 36% and 20%, respectively, and a 5% decrease in the losses due to photorespiration would be worth approximately …