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Publications

Listed here are publications, reports and articles by the Climate R&D program.

Filter Total Items: 1020

Iron dissolution and speciation in atmospheric mineral dust: Metal-metal synergistic and antagonistic effects

Under acidic atmospheric conditions, iron leached from atmospheric mineral dust may influence the distribution of bioavailable iron at a global scale. However, the effects of non-Fe-containing minerals on iron dissolution remain unknown. This work describes metal-metal synergistic and antagonistic effects on iron dissolution that go beyond aggregation and ionic strength effects in mineral dust mix
Authors
Eshani Hettiarachchi, Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein, Bruce M. Moskowitz, Gayan Rubasinghege

Changing station coverage impacts temperature trends in the Upper Colorado River Basin

Over the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), temperatures in widely used gridded data products do not warm as much as mean temperatures from a stable set of U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations, located at generally lower elevations, in most months of the year. This is contrary to expectations of elevation-dependent warming, which suggests that warming increases with elevation. Thes
Authors
Stephanie A. McAfee, Gregory J. McCabe, Stephen Gray, Gregory T. Pederson

Evidence for shelf acidification during the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

A transect of paleoshelf cores from Maryland and New Jersey contains a ~0.19 m to 1.61 m thick interval with reduced percentages of carbonate during the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Outer paleoshelf cores are barren of nannofossils and correspond to two minor disconformities. Middle paleoshelf cores contain a mixture of samples devoid of nannofossils and those with rare
Authors
Timothy J. Bralower, Lee R. Kump, Marci M. Robinson, Jean Self-Trail, Shelby L. Lyons, Tali Babila, Edward Ballaron, Katherine H. Freeman, Elizabeth A. Hajek, William Rush, James C. Zachos

Overview of the oxygen isotope systematics of land snails from North America

Continental paleoclimate proxies with near-global coverage are rare. Land snail δ18O is one of the few proxies abundant in Quaternary sediments ranging from the tropics to the high Arctic tundra. However, its application in paleoclimatology remains difficult, attributable in part to limitations in published calibration studies. Here we present shell δ18O of modern small (<10 mm) snails across Nort
Authors
Yurena Yanes, Nasser M. Al-Qattan, Jason A. Rech, Jeffrey S. Pigati, Justin P. Dodd, Jeffrey C. Nekola

Population vulnerability to tsunami hazards informed by previous and projected disasters: A case study of American Samoa

Population vulnerability from tsunamis is a function of the number and location of individuals in hazard zones and their ability to reach safety before wave arrival. Previous tsunami disasters can provide insight on likely evacuation behavior, but post-disaster assessments have not been used extensively in evacuation modeling. We demonstrate the utility of post-disaster assessments in pedestrian e
Authors
Nathan J. Wood, Jeanne M. Jones, Yoshiki Yamazaki, Kwok-Fai Cheung, Jacinta Brown, Jamie Jones, Nina Abdollahian

Examining the relationship between portable luminescence reader measurements and depositional ages of paleowetland sediments, Las Vegas Valley, Nevada

Portable luminescence readers are exciting new tools that have the potential to rapidly determine the age structure of late Quaternary stratigraphic columns. This is important because high-resolution age profiling can reveal details about the temporal dynamics of climate cause and ecosystem effect, often while researchers are still in the field. In this paper, we compare new portable luminescence
Authors
Harrison J. Gray, Shannon A. Mahan, Kathleen B. Springer, Jeffrey S. Pigati

Identifying major avalanche years from a regional tree-ring based avalanche chronology for the U.S. Northern Rocky Mountains

Avalanches not only pose a major hazard to people and infrastructure, but also act as an important ecological disturbance.  In many mountainous regions in North America, including areas with existing transportation corridors, reliable and consistent avalanche records are sparse or non-existent.  Thus, inferring long-term avalanche patterns and associated contributory climate and weather factors re
Authors
Erich H. Peitzsch, Daniel B. Fagre, Gregory T. Pederson, Jordy Hendrikx, Karl W. Birkeland, Daniel Stahle

Juke Box trench: A valuable archive of late Pleistocene and Holocene stratigraphy in the Bonneville basin, Utah

A backhoe trench in deposits of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville and Holocene wetlands below the mouth of Juke Box Cave, near Wendover, Utah, provides an excellent view of the late Pleistocene and Holocene geologic history of the area. The following stratigraphic units are exposed (ascending): preBonneville gravel (fluvial or lacustrine) and oolitic sand (ages greater than 30,000 yr B.P.); Lake Bonnevi
Authors
Charles G. Oviatt, Jeffrey S. Pigati, David B. Madsen, David E. Rhode, Jordon Bright

PRISM marine sites—The history of PRISM sea surface temperature estimation

For more than three decades, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) Project has compiled paleoenvironmental data with the goal of reconstructing global conditions during the warm interval in the middle of the Piacenzian Age of the Pliocene Epoch (about 3.3 to 3.0 million years ago). Because this is the most recent interval of time in which
Authors
Marci M. Robinson, Harry J. Dowsett, Kevin M. Foley, Christina R. Riesselman

Differing modes of biotic connectivity within freshwater ecosystem mosaics

We describe a collection of aquatic and wetland habitats in an inland landscape, and their occurrence within a terrestrial matrix, as a “freshwater ecosystem mosaic” (FEM). Aquatic and wetland habitats in any FEM can vary widely, from permanently ponded lakes, to ephemerally ponded wetlands, to groundwater‐fed springs, to flowing rivers and streams. The terrestrial matrix can also vary, including
Authors
David M. Mushet, Laurie C. Alexander, Micah Bennet, Kate Schofield, Jay R. Christensen, Genevieve Ali, Amina I. Pollard, Ken M. Fritz, Megan Lang

Biological connectivity of seasonally ponded wetlands across spatial and temporal scales

Many species that inhabit seasonally ponded wetlands also rely on surrounding upland habitats and nearby aquatic ecosystems for resources to support life stages and to maintain viable populations. Understanding biological connectivity among these habitats is critical to ensure that landscapes are protected at appropriate scales to conserve species and ecosystem function. Biological connectivity oc
Authors
Lora L. Smith, Amanda Subalusky, Carla L. Atkinson, Julia E. Earl, David M. Mushet, David E. Scott, Stacey L. Lance, Steve A. Johnson

Fire, flood, and drought: Extreme climate events alter flow paths and stream chemistry

Extreme climate events—such as hurricanes, droughts, extreme precipitation, and wildfires—have the potential to alter watershed processes and stream response. Yet due to the destructive and hazardous nature and unpredictability of such events, capturing their hydrochemical signal is challenging. A 5‐year postwildfire study of stream chemistry in the Fourmile Creek watershed, Colorado Front Range,
Authors
Sheila F. Murphy, R. Blaine McCleskey, Deborah A. Martin, Jeffrey H. Writer, Brian A. Ebel