W&L Dept. of Earth and Environmental Geoscience (formerly Geology)
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This collection contains the scholarship of students in the W&L Dept. of Earth and Environmental Geoscience .
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Recent Submissions
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The Removal of the Jordan's Point Dam: Examining Channel Restructure and Sediment Mobilization (thesis)
The 2019 removal of the Jordan's Point Dam, a low-head concrete structure built in 1911 but predated by several older crib dams, is understood to have served as a significant geomorphological event in the Maury River. ... -
Assessing the Impact of Soil on Manganese Contamination in Springs and Groundwater in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia (thesis)
A substantial fraction of the Shenandoah Valley, VA population relies on ground and spring water for domestic use. Manganese (Mn) is of particular concern in groundwater, as low-level chronic exposure to aqueous Mn ... -
Analyzing the Relationships Between Aqueous Manganese and Geological Factors in Groundwater in the Shenandoah Valley (thesis)
Manganese (Mn) can be either harmful or beneficial to human health, depending on the phase and concentration that the element is found in. In recent years research has indicated that low level chronic exposure to aqueous ... -
Estimating Soil Carbon Content of Grazing Lands in Rockbridge County, Virginia Using Statistical and Machine Learning Techniques (thesis)
In recent years, organizations have explored various methods of quantifying soil carbon to document carbon flux or provide economic incentive to farmers utilizing management practices that sequester carbon in their soil. ... -
Impacts of Low-Head Dam Construction and Removal with Little Channel Sediment Storage: Case Study from the Maury River, Virginia
Dam removal projects are becoming more frequent as awareness of the negative ecological consequences increases and dams begin to fail. However, due to the potential threats of post-removal channel migration, bank erosion, ... -
Approximating Meteoric (10)Be Using the Concentration of Acid-Extractable Grain Coatings: A Case Study Tracing Erosion Depth on Dominica, Lesser Antilles (thesis)
Surface process studies on Dominica have emphasized landslide research in order to improve hazard mitigation, but a deficit exists in understanding the general geomorphic processes. The goal of this study is to characterize ... -
Sensing Fluid Pressure During Plucking Events in a Natural Bedrock Channel: Cowpasture River, VA (thesis)
Bedrock river erosion by plucking -- the wholesale removal of bedrock blocks -- is likely the dominant non-glacial driver of incision into topography over both short- and long-term timescales. Engineering and physical/numerical ... -
Dating of Lacustrine molluscan Subfossil Assemblages Using AAR Techniques to Contextualize the Introduction of Zebra Mussels to a Wisconsin Lake
In order to accurately track paleoecological change, researchers must first gain detailed knowledge of respective sample dates and thus the degree of time-averaging among those samples. Understanding the degree of ... -
Playing the Dam Game: How a Proposed Hydroelectric Dam Could Trigger Central Asia's First Water War (thesis)
In 2012, President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan threatened to use military action against Kyrgyzstan if the Kyrgyz government went ahead with plans to build a large hydroelectric dam called Kambarata-1 and entrap a large ... -
New Constraints on the Timing, Rate, and Style of Exhumation of the Wood Hills and Pequop Mountains, Elko County, Nevada (thesis)
In this study, zircon (U-Th)/He analysis is used to documents the timing, rate, and style of exhumation of the Wood Hills and Pequop Mountains, which are part of the Ruby Mountains-East Humboldt Range metamorphic core ... -
Can Changes in the Larval Developmental Modes of Olivella in the Caribbean Neogene Be Used as a Reliable Productivity Proxy? (thesis)
The Closure of the Isthmus of Panama functions as an excellent natural experiment because of our knowledge of the geologic record and the changing environment that influence the temperature, salinity, nutrients, and ... -
Aptian/Albian Sediment Volume and Accumulation Rates, Alaska North Slope and Beaufort Shelf, from Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation and Modeling (thesis)
We present a regional sequence-stratigraphic interpretation of the Torok-Nanushuk clinothem in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska (NPRA), Alaskan state lands and Beaufort shelf using 2-D seismic reflection data, ... -
Chronological Persistence of Acropora cervicornis at Coral Gardens, Belize (thesis)
Acropora cervicornis (staghorn coral) is an important framework-building scleractinian coral that dominated many Caribbean reefs throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Acropora spp. suffered collapse throughout the ... -
Terrestrial Mercury Cycling in Northern Michigan: Honeysuckle Creek Watershed and Burt Lake (thesis)
Mercury (Hg), a potent environmental toxicant, affects the cognition and health of both human and aquatic ecosystem populations. Despite regulation-driven decreases in atmospheric mercury levels, Burt Lake is among the ... -
δ13C and δ18O Analyses of Carbonate Concretions and Nodules and the Evidence for a Cretaceous Greenhouse (thesis)
The Aptian-Albian Torok Formation and Nanushuk Formation rocks of Slope Mountain, also known as the Marmot Syncline, have been interpreted to represent shallow marine, deltaic, and fluvial depositional environments. ... -
Mangrove Management Strategies for Social and Ecological Integrity
This research seeks to determine if mangrove restoration projects successfully contribute to improved ecological and social well-being in case-studies from three different countries: Colombia, Vietnam, and Kenya. By comparing ... -
High Resolution Isotope Sclerochronology Reflects Seasonal Cycle Changes at Rocky Point, Belize Between the Last Interglacial and Present
The last Pleistocene interglacial period is thought to be characterized by warmer temperatures, higher precipitation, higher sea level and lower ice volume than today due to different orbital forcing parameters at that ... -
Influence of Late Jurassic Inversion Structures on Sedimentary Basin Uplift, Chukchi Shelf, Offshore Alaska (thesis)
This thesis examines the existence of a reactivated fault interpreted to be an inversion structure associated with a Jurassic tectonic event in the Chukchi Shelf off the NW coast of Alaska. Brookian, Jurassic, Ellesmerian, ... -
GeoEye-1 Multispectral Satellite Imagery Classification: An Accurate Method for Identifying Populations of Acropora spp. Corals Prior to a Field Study (thesis)
In recent decades Caribbean coral reefs have experienced drastic decline in live coral cover. Some of the main framework-building coral species Acropora cervicornis, Acropora palmata, and the new hybrid species Acropora ... -
Hf and Pb Isotope Data for Mafic Lava Flows from the Three Sisters and Newberry Regions of the Central Oregon Cascades (thesis)
The Cascade arc is an end member convergent margin in which the young and slowly subducting slab is hotter than in most subduction zones. Consequently, the timing and location of slab contribution, namely dehydration, is ...