Book Chapters

Key messages: • Climate change is impacting biodiversity from local to global scales, and growing evidence suggests that further loss of biodiversity can contribute to climate change, creating a destabilizing feedback. • Loss of plant diversity due to climate and land-use change can weaken ecosystem functioning, leading to a decrease in biomass accumulation and reduced carbon storage. •...

Ecohydrology emphasizes the interactions between ecological and hydrological patterns and processes in wetlands. Given that wetlands are fundamentally defined by prolonged saturation or flooding of land, an ecohydrological perspective is implicit in wetland ecology. In this review, we provide examples of how variation in hydrologic processes in space and time influences wetland...

The modern Arctic has been formed through a series of continent–continent collisions, accretion of terranes and phases of crustal extension. The Neoproterozoic Timanian, Paleozoic Caledonian and Uralian, and late Mesozoic Verkhoyansk–Kolyma, Chukotkan and Brookian orogenies formed several large fold-and-thrust belts (FTBs). The FTBs are exposed across vast areas of continents and...

AActual evapotranspiration (ETa) is an essential climate variable that can be used for drought monitoring and water availability assessment because of its close connection with vegetation, soil moisture, and the water cycle. An operational ETa using the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and global weather datasets was developed through the Simplified Surface Energy...

This chapter presents and applies five constraint/enabler categories that influence integration of the plural values of cultural ecosystem services (CES) in decision-making, highlighting how diverse forms of CES knowledge can intersect with decision making contexts. CES make foundational contributions to human well-being, and yet they are consistently underrepresented in research...

Rare earth elements (REEs) occur in magmatic rocks but are especially enriched in carbonatite and alkaline silicates. If these rocks are chemically weathered, then the REEs may become further enriched within the regolith developed from these rocks. Primary magmatic REE minerals, as well as the various carbonate minerals and apatite, provide the REEs which, under pervasive chemical...

Many man-made structures can form a hazard to avian wildlife. The most common hazard is one of collision, and this paper will look at problems with glass in buildings, power lines, and wind turbines all as sources of collision and trauma to avian wildlife. However, other anthropogenic factors that can adversely affect avian wildlife can be those that effectively eliminate suitable...

This field trip focuses on the geology of the central Appalachian Valley and Ridge province near Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. Recent geologic mapping utilizing 1-m resolution lidar data has revealed new insights into the Paleozoic stratigraphy, structural geology, and Neogene landscape evolution of the region. The detailed mapping reveals the presence of the Big Spring Station Member and...

In this chapter I discuss the use of so-called macroseismic data, i.e., reports of damage and other effects of shaking on humans and the built environment, to improve the characterization of earthquakes and the ground motions they produce. Macroseismic data are critical not only to investigate earthquakes that occurred before the start of the instrumental era in seismology, but are also...

Establishing the rupture extent and slip distribution of individual paleo-earthquakes is vital for assessing fault behavior including the persistence of rupture segmentation, recurrence patterns, and similarity of successive events, key issues in both fault mechanics and hazard assessment. Techniques with high temporal and geodetic precision as well as a wide distribution of study sites...

Phenological data collection and analysis are well-suited to higher education settings, providing valuable opportunities for hands-on data collection, manipulation, and interpretation. Few subjects are more conducive or accessible for engaging diverse learners in meaningful and impactful science at such large scales and minimal cost. In this chapter, we provide a range of examples of how...

Pollen records from the unglaciated southeastern region of North America provide an overview of biogeographic changes associated with vegetational migration northward following the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Changing insolation during the Holocene affected forest composition on the Coastal Plain, and rising sea level controlled the distribution of marsh and forested wetlands...