Browsing Faculty of Arts and Sciences by Keyword "Environmental Sciences"
Now showing items 1-20 of 22
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American Maize: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Spatio-Temporal Variation in Temperature Sensitivity
(2015-04-20)Agricultural production is vulnerable to climate change. However, this vulnerability can be reduced by adapting food crops to a hotter climate. Many studies have ignored adaptation when quantifying the effect of climate ... -
Atmospheric Observations and Models of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Urban Environments
(2015-05-18)Greenhouse gas emission magnitudes, trends, and source contributions are highly uncertain, particularly at sub-national scales. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, one potential strategy for reducing these ... -
Behavioral and Experimental Insights on Consumer Decisions and the Environment
(2016-05-19)In the following essays, I apply theoretical insights and experimental methods from behavioral science to address three questions at the intersection of environmental economics and consumer behavior. In Chapter 1, I use ... -
Development, Aircraft Integration, and Field Deployment of a CO2 Herriott Cell to Measure Arctic Carbon Fluxes
(2017-01-13)The warming of the Arctic, as mediated by climate change, will precipitate a feedback effect. Should the carbon in soil be processed and emitted as the greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4, the feedback effect will be positive; ... -
Evaluating Potential Linkages of the Pitas Point and Ventura Fault Systems, California: Implications for Seismic Hazards
(2017-07-14)The offshore Pitas Point and onshore Ventura faults are aligned along strike, which has led some in the geological community to propose their connection at depth. However, this connection requires that onshore and offshore ... -
Human Impacts on Atmospheric Particulate Matter in Amazonia
(2018-09-16)Human activities can change the concentration, chemical composition, and properties of atmospheric particulate matter (PM). A quantitative understanding of human impacts on PM is essential for accurate modeling of anthropogenic ... -
Ice Stream Variability and Links to Climate
(2015-09-22)This dissertation explores the variability and climatic importance of ice streams, regions of fast flow in ice sheets. Observations indicate that ice stream variability plays an important role in the current mass balance ... -
Multi-Decadal Climate Variability: A Pacific Mechanism With Global Implications
(2018-04-10)Over the instrumental record, global surface temperatures have increased in a step-like pattern. Two periods of rapid temperature rise (1910 to 1945 and 1976 to roughly 2000) are separated by periods of relative temperature ... -
Observing atmospheric formaldehyde from space: validation and implications
(2017-01-06)Formaldehyde (HCHO) column data from satellites are widely used as a proxy for emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but validation of the data has been extremely limited. Here I use highly accurate HCHO aircraft ... -
Oil and Water: Essays on the Economics of Natural Resource Usage
(2016-05-24)As the developing world continues its pace of rapid growth and the threat of climate change intensifies, the economics of natural resource usage become increasingly important. From the perspective of both economic efficiency ... -
On Aging: Analyses of Long-Term Fine Particulate Air Pollution Exposure, Genetic Variants, and Blood DNA Methylation Age in the Elderly
(2018-04-19)Human aging is often accompanied by the development of chronic disease. Research has identified molecular processes that are shared by aging-related diseases, and it is widely believed that pre-clinical changes in these ... -
On the Time Scale Structure of Climate Variability and Response
(2016-12-15)This thesis analyzes several aspects pertaining to the time scale structure of climate variability and the temperature response to external radiative forcing. The analysis begins with an examination of the structure of ... -
Optical, Physical, and Thermodynamic Properties of Organic Particulate Matter
(2017-05-02)Organic compounds constitute 20 to 90% of the submicron atmospheric particulate matter (PM) mass. The majority of this mass is produced by the oxidation and subsequent condensation of biogenic and anthropogenic gaseous ... -
Particulate Matter and Ozone: Remote Sensing and Source Attribution
(2015-04-21)Particulate matter (PM) and tropospheric ozone are air pollutants that are harmful to human health and have broad implications for climate. Despite their importance, there remain large uncertainties related to their sources, ... -
The Physicochemical Properties of Secondary Organic Materials
(2015-05-20)The physicochemical properties of the secondary organic materials (SOMs) that constitute the particle phase have potentially important consequences for the growth, the reactivity, and ultimate fate of atmospheric organic ... -
Role of the secretome in manganese and carbon oxidation by filamentous ascomycete fungi
(2015-09-19)Fungi are the primary decomposers of recalcitrant plant and animal material in terrestrial environments, thereby serving as important drivers of global carbon cycling and climate dynamics and as mediators in renewable ... -
Stable Isotope Systematics of Abiotic Nitrate and Nitrite Reduction Coupled With Anaerobic Iron Oxidation: the Role of Reduced Clays and Fe-Bearing Minerals
(2015-04-08)Under anaerobic conditions, it is widely assumed that nitrate (NO3-) and nitrite (NO2-) reduction is primarily the result of microbial respiration (Burgin and Hamilton, 2007; Granger et al., 2008). However, it is also ... -
Stable Water Isotopes as Tracers in Global Precipitation
(2016-05-10)Stable water isotopes (H2O, H18O, and HDO) are incorporated into the microphysics schemes of two different atmospheric models. This thesis describes the use of these molecules as tracers in precipitation budgets to assess ... -
Techno-Economic Assessment of the Need for Bulk Energy Storage in Low-Carbon Electricity Systems With a Focus on Compressed Air Storage (CAES)
(2015-01-16)Increasing electrification of the economy while decarbonizing the electricity supply is among the most effective strategies for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in order to abate climate change. This thesis offers ... -
Theory, Modeling, and Impact of the Sea Ice Floe Size Distribution
(2017-05-15)This dissertation explores the evolution of floes, the individual pieces that comprise Earth's sea ice cover, from the perspective of the local and regional climatic evolution of Earth's polar areas. Each individual floe ...