Publications

The origin and nature of eolian (wind-blown) sediments are reviewed, with an emphasis on the occurrence of these features in the Quaternary. Eolian sediments consist of windblown sand, loess, and long-range-transported (LRT) dust, in order of decreasing particle size. Eolian sand forms some of the most dramatic landscapes in the world, particularly when these sediments are deposited as...

Islands come in all shapes, sizes and types, from tiny rocky outcrops, to enormous continental landmasses. The true number of islands distributed in the planet’s seas and oceans is still elusive. Recent efforts bolstered by an abundance of detailed satellite imagery and the sophistication of geographic information systems (GIS) are bringing real answers to those questions closer than...

The effects of anthropogenic climate change are apparent in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), USA, with forest die-off, insect outbreaks, and wildfires impacting forest ecosystems. A long-term perspective would enable assessment of the historical range of variability in forest ecosystems and better determination of recent forest dynamics and historical thresholds. The objectives...

1. The effects of changing climate and disturbance on mountain forest carbon stocks vary with tree species distributions and over elevational gradients. Warming can increase carbon uptake by stimulating productivity at high elevations but also enhance carbon release by increasing respiration and the frequency, intensity, and size of wildfires. 2. To understand the consequences of climate...

Recently obtained radiocarbon ages from the southern Puget Lowland and reevaluation of limiting ages from the Olympic Peninsula in the light of new light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data suggest that the Juan de Fuca and Puget lobes of the Cordilleran ice sheet reached their maximum extents after 16,000 calibrated yr B.P. Source areas for both lobes fed through a common conduit, likely...

In late Wisconsin time, the Purcell Trench lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet dammed the Clark Fork of the Columbia River in western Montana, creating glacial Lake Missoula. During part of this epoch, the Okanogan lobe also dammed the Columbia River downstream, creating glacial Lake Columbia in northeast Washington. Repeated failure of the Purcell Trench ice dam released glacial Lake...

Results are presented and compared for the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) simulations of the middle Holocene (MH, 6 ka) and Last Interglacial (LIG, 127 ka). These simulations are designated as Tier 1 experiments (midHolocene and lig127k) for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) and the Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project phase 4 (PMIP4)...

Postfire shifts in vegetation composition will have broad ecological impacts. However, information characterizing postfire recovery patterns and their drivers are lacking over large spatial extents. In this analysis, we used Landsat imagery collected when snow cover (SCS) was present, in combination with growing season (GS) imagery, to distinguish evergreen vegetation from deciduous...

Land plays a critical role in both economic and environmental accounting. As an asset, it occupies a unique position at the intersection of the System of National Accounts (SNA), the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Central Framework (SEEA-CF), and (as a spatial unit) SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EEA), making land a natural starting point for developing natural...

Soil respiration is a primary component of the terrestrial carbon cycle. However, predicting the response of soil respiration to climate change remains a challenge due to the complex interactions between environmental drivers, especially plant phenology, temperature, and soil moisture. In this study, we use a 1‐D diffusion‐reaction model to calculate depth‐resolved CO2 production rates...

Megafires are large wildfires that occur under extreme weather conditions and produce mixed burn severities across diverse environmental gradients. Assessing megafire effects requires data covering large spatiotemporal extents, which are difficult to collect from field inventories. Remote sensing provides an alternative but is limited in revealing post-fire recovery trajectories and the...

Water management increasingly involves tradeoffs, making its accounting highly relevant in our interconnected world. Physical and economic data about water in many nations are becoming more widely integrated through application of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts for Water (SEEA-Water), which enables the tracking of linkages between water and the economy. We present the...