Whitings on both the Great Bahama Bank (GBB) and Little Bahama Bank (LBB) were evaluated using data collected from 2000-2010 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. A semi-objective method was developed to classify whiting patches from other look-alike features using the recently developed Floating Algae Index (FAI) algorithm, an empirical cloud masking algorithm, and a gradient analysis from the 250-m resolution MODIS data. A total of 1,500 images with minimal cloud cover was used to calculate long-term and seasonal trends as well as an average daily coverage for both banks. Annual and monthly frequency of occurrences for whitings at every location was also calculated. Based on the results, the distribution of whitings over the GBB was restricted between 25–30'N and 23–45'N and occurred most frequently on the edge of the bank. Whitings were observed throughout the LBB and at much higher frequencies than in the GBB, especially on the east side from November to February. Results from daily whiting coverage indicate whitings cover nearly twice as much area over the LBB compared to the GBB. Whitings show a clear seasonal variation with respect to coverage on both banks. Whiting coverage over the LBB has a clear seasonal variation with peak coverage in spring (April) and fall (November) and minimum coverage during summer. Whiting coverage over the GBB peaks in spring (April), but no second peak or seasonal minimum was observed. Sea surface temperature (SST), photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) and wind were compared to the observed long-term and seasonal trends of whiting coverage. Using multi-variable analyses, the influence of SST and PAR on monthly whiting coverage over the GBB from 2000-2010 was found to be statistically significant, though the correlation between the three values was low. The results indicate that these parameters may not directly influence whiting origin and coverage but rather have an effect through influence mechanism, for example through phytoplankton blooms. It is hypothesized that whitings are directly influenced by cyanobacterial phytoplankton, which are dependent on SST and PAR. Long-term trends in whiting coverage differ between the two banks. In general, whiting coverage appeared to be decreasing from 2000-2010 over the LBB, while the opposite trend was observed over the GBB during the same time period. It is currently unclear what led to these opposite trends due to lack of long-term, in-situ measurements of the water environments in the two banks. However, this is the first study that documents the long-term trends for both banks, from which one may infer that the processes affecting whiting occurrence in the two banks vary greatly and future research is needed to understand the driving forces of whitings in order to improve the current understanding of their contributions in the global carbon cycle.

In the past, the Northern Tampa Bay Area (NTBA) wetlands saw severe declines in hydrologic conditions due to excessive groundwater withdrawal rates. Eventually these rates were reduced to allow the wetlands to recover. To monitor this recovery, the Southwest Florida Water Management district (SWFWMD) set up a fieldwork based scoring methodology, called the Wetlands Assessment Procedure (WAP). WAP has been used in many studies of the area since groundwater withdrawal reductions; with many of those studies finding the recovery to be mixed at best. However, these studies were very limited in the number of wetlands they could assess due to the limitations of fieldwork. Therefore, it was proposed that remotely sensed variables associated with water consumption and stress be used to assess the recovery of the NTBA wetlands, as remote sensing allows for efficient assessments of targets over large area. Utilizing ASTER imagery scenes from 2005 and 2014, 211 wetlands’ remotely sensed responses of NDVI, Land Surface Temperature (LST), and Evapotranspiration (ET) were mapped and statistically examined for trends indicating improvement or decline. Furthermore, a subset of WAP scores for the two years were examined and compared to the remotely sensed values. The results were contradictory, with remotely sensed responses showing an improvement over the time period, WAP scores indicating a decline in hydrologic conditions, and the two methods showing little to no fit when modeled against each other. As such, it is believed at this time that the remotely sensed method is not suitable for measuring the indicators of wetland recovery used in the WAP methodology.

I analyzed lake fertilization (with nitrogen and phosphorus) as a tool to assist in the recovery of the Snake River sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus ~) in the oligotrophic Sawtooth Valley Lakes in southcentral Idaho. These analyses involved monitoring, manipulating, and modelling several aspects of the lakes' primary producer, nutrient, and light parameters. In Pettit Lake, I evaluated the effects of metalimnetic and epilimnetic fertilization in 330-m 3 mesocosms. The metalimnetic treatment was equal to or more effective than the epilimnetic treatment in increasing chlorophyll a, phytoplankton biovolume, and primary productivity, yet caused smaller changes in periphyton growth and water clarity. Thus, metalirnnetic fertilization may provide a tool for increasing lake productivity while minimally impacting water clarity. The Sawtooth Valley Lakes had deep chlorophyll maxima (DCM) with mean chlorophyll a peaks 240-1000% of mean epilimnetic concentrations. The DCM existed at low light levels and accounted for 36- 72% of the lakes' primary production. Epilimnetic fertilization of330-m 3 mesocosms in Redfish Lake increased levels of primary productivity and chlorophyll a, but decreased Secchi depths and light available in the meta- and hypolimnion. I modelled the effects of increased chlorophyll (resulting from epilimnetic fertilization) and decreased light penetration on vertical primary productivity profiles. The simulations showed a large increase in epilimnetic primary productivity due to fertilization, and only a slight decrease in production in the deeper strata due to self-shading. I also modelled the dependence of Red fish Lake's production on nutrients from the watershed, from lake fertilization, and from marine-derived nutrients from salmon. The model utilized our water budget and nutrient loading measurements. The model and empirical evidence indicated that even before hydropower dams were present in the migration corridor, marine-derived nutrients were not of major importance to lake production, contributing only ~3% of the lake's annual phosphorus load. This contribution was partially offset by the lake's quick flushing rate (3 yr) and phosphorus export by smolts. The model predicted annual adult salmon returns to be 3,800 under pre-dam conditions, 370 under modern conditions, 750 when doubling watershed nutrient loading (simulating lake fertilization), and 780 when doubling migration survival.

Many flood risk assessments are based on instrumental records less than a century in length. Sedimentary and historical archives provide the opportunity to extend flood records by several centuries to millennia. In doing so these longer flood records provide opportunities for improving upon current flood risk assessment and gaining additional insight on the various climatic and geomorphic processes that drive changes in flood frequency. Such a reconstruction has not been attempted previously for Boston, MA where extratropical cyclones (ETC) are currently the dominant mechanism of coastal flooding. Here, we present both a historical reconstruction of extreme storm tides to affect Boston Harbor, and an independent geologic assessment of extreme flooding based on flood deposits preserved within the sediments of Bartlett Pond, a back-barrier coastal pond located 60 kilometers south of Boston. The historical reconstruction presented here identifies events of extreme flooding back to 1723, which are temporally consistent with overwash deposits identified from the sedimentary analysis at Bartlett Pond. Bartlett Pond is beyond the influence of significant dredging, landfill and dam projects within Boston Harbor. The consistency between extreme flood occurrences in Boston and Bartlett Pond therefore suggest that these man-made alterations have had a minimal impact on extreme flooding to the harbor. Additional modeling work is necessary however to provide confirmation on this initial finding. While flooding associated with the Blizzard of 1978 appears to be an anomaly in the modern instrumental record, our new historical/sedimentological record identify 6 additional events of similar size since European colonization, suggesting an under-assessment of the risk of these types of extreme events for Boston by as much as 300%. Additionally, the 1000 yr Bartlett Pond sedimentary reconstruction appears to show an increase in overwash frequency over the last 300 – 500 years when compared to the 500 years prior. A similar increase in ETC flooding has been observed in nearby sedimentological archives from the Gulf of Maine and could possibly be explained by variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and/or changes in sea surface temperature.

Paratetramitus jugosus, a vahlkampfiid amoebomastigote, was isolated into monoprotist/monobacterial (Bacillus sp.), cultures from laminated microbial mats (Laguna Figueroa, Baja California Norte, Mexico) and muds (Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts). Chromidia, roughly spherical (2-4 µm in diameter) were released from both walled spherical cysts (10-12 µm) and phagocytotic amoebic forms. Desiccation-resistant walled chromidia, at first spherical, resorb their walls and develop into small pleiomorphic phagocytotic amoeba. Small amoebae feed and mature into typical monopodial vahlkampfiid adults confirming previous work (Dobell, 1913, and especially the analysis of a larger encysting vahlkampfiid amoeba associated with Long Island oyster disease studied at Woods Hole by Mary Jane Hogue, 1914). I show here that P. jugosus reproduces and develops through its life history stages of chromidia, mature monopodial amoebae, and cysts as rapidly and abundantly under low oxygen levels as at ambient atmospheric oxygen concentrations. Anoxia was achieved in the laboratory by incubation of entirely desiccated inocula from old mat or mud samples in Brewer jars with or without gas packs to control atmospheric conditions. Three sets of experiments yielded the same results: vigorous growth on bacillus food occurred on manganese acetate media by two weeks on the surface of agar plates under ambient oxic or hypoxic to anoxic conditions. Preliminary investigations of similar amoeba from geographically distinct field sites in Europe, North America, and the Caribbean were made. From them, I suggest it is likely these coastal amoebomastigotes that propagate by small desiccation resistant, oxygen-independent, manganese tolerant chromidia are genuinely cosmopolitan in its distribution.

The Big Clifty (Jackson) Sandstone Member of the Golconda Formation is the most important of the Mississippian (Chesterian) heavy-oil reservoirs in the southeastern Illinois Basin. Heavy oil reservoirs, or asphalt rock deposits, have been studied extensively in south central and western Kentucky, and ~2 billion barrels of original oil in place (OOIP) have been proposed to occur in the Big Clifty Sandstone. Despite high OOIP estimates, heterogeneities in the reservoir negatively impact the production of heavy oil deposits. Heterogeneities related to depositional facies changes are poorly understood in the Big Clifty Sandstone of Kentucky, where it has been mostly described as a 60-120 feet thick sandstone unit. In some locations, the Big Clifty occurs as two distinct sand bodies with intercalated mud-rich units and, most typically, with the greatest clay- and silt-rich units present between sandstone bodies. Questions exist as to how such muddy facies occur in the reservoir. This study couples sedimentary facies analysis with sequence stratigraphy to assess how lithological factors affect the occurrence of petroleum in Big Clifty reservoirs. Multiple datasets were integrated to develop a depositional model for lithologic facies observed in this study. Datasets include core, exposure descriptions, petrographic analysis, bitumen concentrations, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), and borehole geophysical analysis. This study occurred in Logan, Warren, and Butler counties, with emphasis on an active asphalt-rock mine in Logan County. Surface geophysical methods aided in demarcating Chesterian limestones, sandstone bodies and, in particular, highly resistive heavy-oil laden Big Clifty channel bodies. In Warren County, located E-NE of the Stampede Mine, the Big Clifty coalesces into a single amalgamated sandstone channel or a series of superimposed stacked channels as observed in outcrop along Indian Creek at McChesney Field Station and at Jackson’s Orchard. In these locations, the tidal influence is subtle with large-scale trough cross bedding dominating, and the contact on the Beech Creek Limestone is sharp. Facies changes related to the environment of deposition greatly impact the quality of heavy-oil reservoirs and must be taken into consideration during exploration and siting of asphalt rock mines.

Currently, the U.S. and China are the two largest national economic entities in the world. However, it is noticeable that the two countries have considerably different strategies for economic development, environmental protection and land supply in coastal zones. In order to understand the coastline dynamics, land use land cover (LULC) changes and land management policies in the U.S. and China, a case study of the Tampa Bay (TB) watershed, Florida, U.S., and Xiangshan Harbor (XH), Zhejiang Province, China was conducted. The two areas possess similar humid subtropical climate and dense population, but experienced different anthropogenic impacts. TB sat at a developed stage with sound environmental laws, regulations and projects to preserve natural landscapes. XH was at a developing stage and focused more on an economic development in the last 30 years. Comparing the LULC change patterns and the major driving forces for the changes between the two study areas, governments and public could know what factors cause the land use conversion and how to preserve the natural landscapes. A new water index called the weighted normalized water index (WNDWI) was proposed to extract coastlines in TB and XH since current water indices could not classify turbid water bodies and shadow areas well. Two threshold methods (i.e., Otsu threshold method and multiple thresholds method) were implemented to find an optimal threshold to segment the water from the land. The experiments demonstrate that the WNDWI algorithm can achieve high accuracies to classify water from land with an optimal threshold in the two study sites. Coastlines in 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015 in TB and XH were extracted and the changes were detected and highlighted. The results indicate that coastlines in TB were mostly stable, while those in XH had been undergoing intensive human interferences, indicating that XH was at a developing stage. Major anthropogenic impacts on XH coastlines are land reclamation and aquaculture, resulting in an impacted area of approximately 20.3 km2. The land cover maps of TB and XH in 1985 (1986), 1995, 2005 and 2015 were produced by classifying Landsat images using the random forest algorithm. The reflectance distributions of the land cover types indicate that it is difficult to classify agricultural land, rangeland, upland forest and wetland if using the optical bands only from a single Landsat image. Multi-seasonal image composites and the land surface temperature (LST) band were involved in image classification to achieve higher accuracies. The overall accuracies (OAs) of the land cover map of TB in 2015 and that of XH in 2005 were increased by 5.14% and 4.33% after adding the LST band. The OAs of the four years’ land cover maps of TB range from 81.14% to 83.43%, whereas those of XH vary from 84.67% to 87.67%. According to the experimental results, the total urban area increased by 11.8% in TB, while that in XH increased 138.9% during the last 30 years. Wetland in TB reduced by 8.3% while that in XH reduced 49.0%. The results of logistic regression analysis indicated that the density of wetland is a major driver for urban growth in TB with a strong negative impact while the relationship is opposite in XH. It is worth noting that XH has been undergoing a rapid urbanization and industrialization process with a vast amount of natural landscapes converted to urban areas, whereas TB has already passed the developing stage and issued environmental laws and programs to preserve natural landscapes from human exploitation. In terms of preserving natural landscapes and protecting the vulnerable coastal environment for our next generation, the coastal planning decision makers in XH should not only consider economic values and short-term benefits but also integrate values of ecological, social, and cultural and long-term benefits when making coastal management decisions.

As global temperatures rise due to anthropogenic climate change, water resources, thus economies, are threatened. A geologically recent period of increased temperatures is the mid-Holocene and an investigation of its climate may allow for a better understanding of future precipitation and changes to regional water resources. The regions of interest are tropical Northern Central America and subtropical North America with Belize and Florida representing each climate zone. By reconstructing mid-Holocene climate in Florida and Belize, I hope to provide a better understanding of how increased temperatures and a reduced latitudinal temperature gradient impacts both precipitation patterns and variability. Today, drivers of changes in precipitation include climate systems such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Therefore, it is imperative to determine their latitudinal influences during the mid-Holocene and consequently their potential impact on water resources in the near future. Speleothems from Chen Ha Cave, Vaca Plateau, Belize and Brown's Cave, West Central Florida, provided high-resolution (sub-annual to decadal) oxygen and carbon stable isotope data that allowed for a detailed investigation of mid-Holocene climate. The speleothems were sampled along the growth axis of a cross-section for oxygen and carbon isotopic analysis. 234U-230Th dating was used to create a chronology for each record and determine the time step between each isotope sample. Time series analysis with variations of Fourier transforms, including Lomb-Scargle, wavelet analysis, and multi-taper method, was used to extract periodicities for each oxygen isotope record. To determine which atmospheric-oceanic modes influenced mid-Holocene precipitation, the speleothem periodicities were compared to those of known periodicities of atmospheric-oceanic modes, such as the AMV and NAO. Finally, the Florida and Belize records were assessed for coherency using cross wavelet analysis. The Floridian speleothem recorded less precipitation compared to present levels due to a westward expansion and intensification of the North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH) with a quasi-persistent but less influential AMV. Relative to today, the mid-Holocene in Belize was slightly wetter which I suggest is a result of a more northerly ITCZ and an intensification of the NASH that increased the strength of the Caribbean Lower Level Jet (CLLJ). The Seuss solar cycle was also significant in Belize, contributing 7.2% of the precipitation variability. Wavelet coherency assessment reveal very little connectivity between the Florida and Belize speleothem reconstructions, potentially due to the blocking influence of the ITCZ. Comparison to other records from the mid-Holocene supports the hypothesis of an intensified NASH and more northerly ITCZ. A future increase in precipitation in Belize may lead to increased soil erosion, the need for crop adaptation, and risk to the population of low lying areas, such as Belize City. In Florida, reduced precipitation may result in a decrease in agricultural output and threats to the state's freshwater supply.

The primary objective of this study is to provide a greater understanding of the tectonic evolution of the Warburton, Cooper, Eromanga and Lake Eyre Basins in central Australia. However, this study additionally attempts to provide a greater understanding of lineaments. This study compares lineament data with a traditional tectonic analysis in order to evaluate lineaments and to best understand the tectonic evolution of the region.

<p>Undersökningen behandlar hur kriminella personer och polisen använder sig av geografiska förutsättningar i sina respektive verksamheter. Hur de först kartlägger objekt i sin omgivning för att sedan välja hur de ska agera. Kriminella personer och polisen undersöks för att visa hur aktörer, på olika sida om lagen, möter liknande geografiska förutsättningar fast upplever dem på olika sätt. Avslutningsvis återges deras inställning till att först kartlägga objekt i sin omgivning innan de agerar. Undersökningen skildrar hur aktörer subjektivt upplever objektiva föremål i sin omgivning på olika sätt, beroende på deras avsikter. </p><p>Kriminella personer planerar ett brott genom att först kartlägga sin omgivning. Det leder till att de sedan kan avgöra hur de ska agera på brottsplatsen. De beger sig till brottsplatsen en tid innan brottet ska utföras. På brottsplatsen undersöker de människors dagliga rutiner och hur objekt som exempelvis byggnader är placerade, för att kunna underlätta deras brott.  De kriminella har angett vilken tid på dygnet ett brott är som mest gynnsamt för dem. Om de inte kan utföra ett brott under en särskild tid ökar risken för att gripas. Objekt i en omgivning kan skapa tillfällen och försvåra för kriminella att genomföra brott. Deras erfarenhet bidrar till att hitta tillfällen som lämpar sig för brott i en omgivning. Svårigheter anser de vara andra människor som befinner sig på en brottsplats och väderförhållanden.</p><p>I polisens arbete kartläggs objekt i omgivningen utförligt, eftersom de inte vill riskera att skada andra poliser, misstänkta eller allmänheten, när de ska agera i arbetet. På en brottsplats försöker de säkra bevismaterial beroende på brottsplatsens förutsättningar. Polisen vill göra ett gripande på säkrast möjliga sätt, i annat fall kan en polisaktion komma att avbrytas. Det kan handla om att gripa en misstänkt under en särskild tid på dygnet. Under ett spaningsarbete ska enskilda poliser själva kartlägga sin omgivning och avgöra hur en förflyttning ska ske. Polisspanare måste ständigt förnya och omvärdera sin omgivning. Både polisen och kriminella anser att de inte kan utföra respektive arbete utan att först ta hänsyn åt de objekt som finns i en omgivning. De resonerar om varandras agerande och uppfattar liknande objekt i omgivningen. Dessa upplever de sedan på olika sätt, till följd av deras avsikter i arbetet.</p>